Fraud

Same thing happened to me today. A chipper young girl identifying herself as a homeschooled neighbor who lived around the block, told me that she was working on a project. I was thinking, 'Okay, like a scavenger hunt or something?' First fishy thing was that she gave just TOO much detail about everything so as to sound believable. The second fishy thing was that she had a few too many tattoos than I would expect a home-schooled highschooler to have. The third odd thing was that she gushed on a bit much about how much she liked "Weird Al" Yankovich after seeing my t-shirt of the same. I thought to myself, "Really? SERIOUSLY?"

She talked very quickly, which made it difficult for me to get in a word edgewise, but the magazine solicitation finally came out -- and it had a twist. Sure, lots of places try to do fundraisers by selling magazines we don't need, but HER project was different: you can donate your magazine purchases to military men and women overseas! She handed me a very WORN piece of paper that looked like it had seen just too many customers. Not even my old Girl Scout forms looked this worn after a season of selling cookies! The paper had on it the names of military personnel who were the anticipated recipients of my "tax decuctible" gift. Yes, tax deductible -- "UNLIKE those 'fraudulent solicitors.'" She even promised the receipt, and went over in detail all the info on the receipt. Had I had my phone handy, I would've called the 800 number right there in front of her, but I didn't have my phone handy, unfortunately.

I told "CiCi" that I thought it was a wonderful idea, but that I had been burned before w/mag subscriptions. I told her that I wanted to check it out first and I would get back to her -- after all, she gave such a good description of her 'residence around the block' that I could probably just check to see her car and go drop off a check. OR she could come back next week -- how is that so bad if you're a local kid? CiCI had all kinds of excuses, from "the company website is down" to she can't give out any personal information (she'd already identified her 'house.')

I remembered all the pertinent information from our conversation and googled it when I got in the house. That's when I found this website. I immediately called my neighbor, who had just finished talking to her at the door. She had just brushed her off by giving her a dollar (she'll take cash donations, too, for your convenience!) I then called the police, who had already rec'd a call from a neighbor about the same thing. NOTE: make sure you get a good description of the person for the police.